New Bloominglabs Member Information

This page is to help new members get to know what resources are available to you as a member. If you have not already done so, please look over our Membership Manual.

Dues payments

You have been added to our invoicing system so you will now receive monthly dues invoices. Dues are due on the 15th of every month. If you pay via paypal, please use the paypal button/link from within the invoice, doing this automatically updates our invoicing system. If you pay by check or cash you can pay the treasurers assistant during public meetings or you can leave your payment in an envelope in either of the donation boxes. If you do this we request you email treasurer at bloominglabs dot org and let them know you have paid your dues, receipts will be left on the bulletin board.

Who do I ask for help?

If you have a question of any kind about Bloominglabs or using the space just send mail to the members list. This is also a good list to ask for help with a project or tell the rest of us about what you have been working on.

Mailing lists, email stuff

Your email has been subscribed to our announce and members email lists unless you opted out. The announcement list allows us to communicate workshops and public meetings to non-members. The members list is for any member-to-all-members communication. You can modify your mailing list settings from these links:

If you wish to have a mail alias such as <my_name>@bloominglabs.org just send mail to our contact address. This will forward any mail received at that address to the email address you specify. We do not supply an SMTP server for members, only mail aliases.

From our website you can navigate to all of our IT resources

www.bloominglabs.org/assets - Our asset tracking database - if you intend to leave any tools or projects in the space, please consider putting an asset tag on it

badges.bloominglabs.org - Bloomington Hackerspace Badges - Based on the Mozilla Open Badges project, you can receive awards for participating with Bloominglabs! You can also receive awards for learning how to use various tools in our space, making donations, volunteering with events, etc.

https://cosm.com/feeds/53278 - COSM is a site for graphing and sharing sensor data. Bloominglabs has a few kinds of sensors logging activity data you can check out.

In addition to the asset tags, we use red tags to mark objects you wish for other to leave alone or ask before using and green tags to identify free/any use items left in the space. These tags are normally on top of the green filing cabinet in the workshop area.

For an account to edit the wiki send mail to contact at bloominglabs dot org and we will get you setup.

For the dues and assets sites, an email has been sent to you which includes the logins for these sites.

If you want to get involved with our social media outreach, please contact the officers (contact at bloominglabs dot org). They usually know the logins to these services ;-). Lastly please tell your friends and neighbors about us! You can use contact at bloominglabs dot org as a point of contact for anyone who wishes to reach us.

Having guests (non-members) in the space

Often new members ask if it is ok to have friends and family members in the space with them outside of our public meetings. This is totally ok, we encourage folks to show their friends and family around Bloominglabs. We just ask two things. First, they must sign a liability waiver File:RELEASE AND WAIVER OF LIABILITY.pdf. Second, your guests are your responsibility. If you are having kids in the space it's your responsibility to make sure they don't get hurt if they are in the workshop. If they make a mess or cause a problem (whether they are kids or adults) it is your responsibility to handle it. That's it!

Using the big tools

If you wish to use the larger tools like the laser cutter and the machine tools please see our Training category. We generally require training or we verify your experience before turning people loose on those. Otherwise please email the members list if you are unsure who to ask or where to get started.

Using the space itself

There are some things in the space which may not be immediately obvious how to use.